The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife

by Martin Armstrong

  They visited the shops; tried Turkish cigarettes and bought some, inspected ostrich-feathers of which Mr. Darby bought a monstrous blue one for Sarah, drove round the town through squalid streets, past patches of waste ground strewn with garbage and then back to the hotel in the main street, where they sat in the lounge and had drinks. A dirty little Arab boy ran up to them, knelt before their chairs, conjured two newly-hatched chickens out of empty air, and was promptly turned out by a waiter.

  ‘But how did he do it?’ said Mr. Darby, astounded.

  Mr. Amberley shook his head. ‘I have no idea, my dear Darby. But, you may be sure, by no honest means.’

  They walked back to the tender. ‘A curiously beastly hole, isn’t it, Darby?’

  Mr. Darby nodded. ‘To be shaw,’ he said. ‘A place I should call more curious than beautiful.’

  Across the intervening water, reclining superbly upon the blue of sea and sky, the Utopia, with her scarlet funnels, lay serenely awaiting them. And on her, also awaiting them, as Mr. Darby remembered with a sudden sting of apprehension, was Lady Gissingham.

  ‘You have seen the sink, Darby,’ said Mr. Amberley as they got on board the tender. ‘We shall now, mere offscourings of Europe that we are, go down the drain.’

  ‘The … ah … drain?’ Mr. Darby raised enquiring spectacles to his friend’s face.

  ‘The Suez Canal. The name is ominously suggestive.’

  • • • • • • • •,

  When Mr. Darby woke next morning Punnett informed him that he was in the Red Sea. It was immediately apparent to him that the Red Sea was a very disagreeable place. The weather was hot and windy, the Utopia lurched unpleasantly, and the word perspiration began to take on for Mr. Darby a new and terrible meaning. ‘Literally one never stops,’ he said to Mr. Amberley, mopping a streaming face with a large silk handkerchief. The stifling heat and the unsteadiness of the ship made him disinclined to do anything but sit in the lounge or under the awning on the shady side of the deck. The passengers became moody and silent. The great Gudgeon, an unappetizing spectacle, purpler and more irritable than ever, consoled himself with enormous whiskies. Mr. Darby, sipping a John Collins and blessing its inspired namesake, felt that the conditions, despite their extreme unpleasantness, had their advantages, for the prevailing exhaustion could hardly fail to render the redoubtable Lady Gissingham less enterprising. In fact he saw nothing of her except at meals when she occupied a table to herself, a table that displayed to her impassive regard a vacant chair in memory of the vanished Sir Alistair. Mr. Darby as he glanced at her cautiously from time to time from the table which, ever since the day they had visited Toulon, he had shared with Mr. Amberley, found himself wondering what she could be feeling and thinking: but her face told him nothing and his imagination told him no more than her face.

  But though Lady Gissingham’s enterprise was probably dormant, it would have been the greatest rashness, Mr. Darby knew, to relax his precautions, and when Punnett, in view of the stifling heat, advised him to keep his cabin door ajar at night, on the hook provided for the purpose, Mr. Darby wisely refrained.

  ‘No, Punnett!’ he said. ‘No! Heat or no heat, I prefer to shut and bolt it.’ He hesitated for a moment and then added: ‘Not but what I wouldn’t prefer to keep it ajar; but, as I need hardly remind you who are accustomed to travel by sea, one has to be extremely careful. Strange things happen on ships. I may tell you, in strictest confidence, Punnett, that a lady thought fit to enter my cabin some nights ago. Of course I sent her about her business pretty quick; but I have reason, good reason, to think that she may try again, and I prefer to … ah … well … meet her half way.’

  A faint surprise appeared in Punnett’s face, and seeing that he might have given a wrong impression, Mr. Darby hastened to add: ‘By locking the door, I mean, Punnett.’

  ‘Quite so, sir!’ said Punnett. ‘I remember that Professor Harrington had a good deal of trouble with a lady as we were returning from Mandratia, sir. A very bare-faced person, she was.’

  ‘Indeed, now!’ said Mr. Darby.

  ‘Yes, sir. Professor Harrington, as I’ve told you, sir, was a very striking-looking gentleman, and we had a lot of trouble at one time or another.’

  ‘I hope, Punnett,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘that if any lady on this ship should … ah … apply to you …’

  Punnett slightly inclined his head. ‘Leave her to me, sir. I thoroughly understand these cases.’

  ‘Whether it can be the … ah … the sea air,’ said Mr. Darby ruminatively, ‘or possibly … ah …!’

  ‘It’s having so little occupation,’ Punnett replied with authority. ‘Ladies soon get tired of deck-quoits. But, if I might advise, sir, it’s better not to keep out of their way too much. That only leads them on. By making yourself pleasant, sir, and at the same time showing them the kind of gentleman you are, you make it more difficult for them to take liberties.’

  ‘Indeed, now, Punnett!’ said Mr. Darby, much struck. ‘That’s very interesting, very interesting indeed, very what I should call … ah … pipsicological. I must see if I can’t … ah …! At the same time … ah …! However, I’ll think over your advice. I trust,’ he said as he trotted to the door on a downward lurch of the ship, ‘that you yourself have not been … ah … molested?’

  Punnett shook his head sadly. ‘The second-class, sir, is no better than the first.’

  With a gait into which the Red Sea unjustly insinuated an air of inebriety Mr. Darby made for the smoking-room where he dropped, perspiring profusely, into a chair. How far away now seemed Europe, England, and home; the gentle, temperate days and nights, the varied and soothing colours, the pleasant habitableness of the Mediterranean. On the wall opposite him a design both decorative and useful on a soft blue ground displayed the Utopia’s course, and gazing at it now, as he lay back in his chair, he felt how true had been Mr. Amberley’s remark. From the pleasant, airy basin of the Mediterranean they had been sucked into the narrow drain of the Suez Canal and were now being rolled along the seething and stifling sewer of this abominable Red Sea. What other system of sewers awaited them? When and where, if ever, would they emerge, the long drain over, into the fresh air? Not, it was to be feared, in the China Seas, for those ominous parts were, he had learned from Punnett, infested by typhoons. Would the seas that washed the shores of Eutyca and the Mandratic Peninsula be as hot and dusty and restless as this? Mr. Darby was too ignorant and too tired to guess. Slowly his spectacles grew dim, unoccupied. He fell asleep.

  • • • • • • • •

  He was roused by a noise which his scattered wits could not at first diagnose, a strange growling, barking noise which filled him with alarm. Was it a dog-fight? But he had seen no dogs on the Utopia. He opened his eyes and discovered Mr. Amberley in the chair next him. But Mr. Amberley was not making the noise: he sat silent, a mildly cynical, mildly disgusted smile on his face, watching something. Mr. Darby roused himself and turned his eyes in the direction of Mr. Amberley’s gaze.At a table three yards away from them sat two men, one of them the man with a face like a lawyer’s whom Mr. Darby had seen dancing with Lady Gissingham; and at the next table, but leaning away from it towards these two, sat the great Gudgeon with his invariable double whisky. It was from Gudgeon that the noise was proceeding. Mr. Darby began to hear words instead of barks. ‘Damned nonsensical rot!’ Gudgeon was shouting. ‘It’s fools like you, fools that push their noses into what doesn’t concern them, that lead them on. If they ask for more pay, give’em less, that’s what I say; and if that doesn’t bring them to their senses, turn machine-guns on’em. It makes me sick, absolutely sick….’ He beat the table with his hand till his double whisky danced … to hear all the bloody …!’ He gasped: again words were lost in incoherent noises: Gudgeon was struggling with a violent fit of coughing. The cough shook him and belaboured him like a storm wrestling with a tree. His face grew a darker purple, his eyes bulged, his lips shuddered as he gasped for breath. Conversation died in
the smoking-room: everyone, shocked and coldly curious, was watching the noisy struggle of the distorted crimson face and convulsively heaving shoulders. By slow degrees the struggle died down, the cough coughed itself out, leaving Gudgeon, a hideous spectacle, glowering stupidly at the two men. Mr. Darby heard a creak behind him. He turned his head and saw poor, repellent Mrs. Gudgeon holding ajar one half of the swing-doors and gazing imploringly at Gudgeon. But Gudgeon did not see her. ‘I must tell him,’ thought Mr. Darby, ‘I must tell him his wife wants him.’ But just as he was about to get up and do so there fell into the silence the cold, calm, dry voice of the man with the lawyer’s face.

  Listen to me, sir. You’re a public nuisance, and you have the manners of a boor. You were not asked to join the conversation; I am not interested in your views, nor will I tolerate your insolence. Any London Club would have kicked you out long since. This is not a club, but it is a place where a measure of decency must be observed. Now if I hear you making a disturbance again, or molesting not only me but anyone on this ship, I shall lodge a complaint with the Captain and have you put under restraint.’

  ‘And I shall do the same,’ said his companion.

  The man with the lawyer’s face looked round the room. ‘I dare say other gentlemen will join us.’

  ‘With the greatest pleasure,’ said Mr. Amberley, and other voices joined in.

  But Mr. Darby said nothing. He was thinking that he might now slip over to Gudgeon and tell him his wife wanted him. Gudgeon still sat, as he had sat when the man with the lawyer’s face had begun to speak, glowering at them like a thwarted bull, one huge hand on the table at his side. His nostrils dilated and shrank as he took in deep breaths. It seemed that he was slowly gathering his strength, and at last a sound came from him, a deep, contemptuous grunt that had something of a sigh in it. Then he spoke. ‘Blast you all for a pack of mean-spirited mongrels. Blast you all!’ he shouted more loudly, as if the sound of his own voice stimulated him to fury. ‘Do what you damned well like, and be …’ He was rising laboriously to his feet, his great hand pressing convulsively on the little table beside him. There was something sinister and almost magnificent in this ponderous uprearing of the great figure. But before he was quite upright or could finish what he was saying, something caught him in the throat. He choked, swayed, and suddenly the little table on which he was leaning his weight crashed, his whisky went with it, and the tumbler spun across the floor in a great curve. At the same moment Gudgeon came down. His chair was thrust noisily away as his body struck it; there was a heavy bump as his head caught the edge of the overturned table and he collapsed like a huge sack between table and chair.

  The man with the lawyer’s face and his friend sprang up with anxious faces to help him and as Mr. Darby ran forward the door swung open and Mrs. Gudgeon rushed in. The two others were kneeling beside Gudgeon loosening his collar. She flung herself on her knees beside them and bent over him. ‘Sid,’ she cried, ‘Sid, what is it? What’s the matter?’

  Gudgeon, a loathsome and terrible spectacle, seemed as though, with his blue, shuddering lips, he were trying to reply. But no sound came through the noise of his stertorous breathing. Mr. Darby, standing helpless and agitated over the group, saw a little stream of blood run out of the left corner of the unclosed mouth and trickle down the cheek to the smoking-room floor. Gudgeon was lying quite still now except for the movements of chest and nostrils at each breath, and soon these diminished, as the noise of his breathing grew fainter, so that Mrs. Gudgeon’s sobs became for the first time audible. Suddenly a spasm shook the body, as though Gudgeon were trying to rise. But the spasm was brief: the body relaxed, sank back. The breathing had stopped.

  At that moment the doctor hurried in. He knelt down, gave a quick look at the eyes and thrust his hand into the open shirt. After a pause he withdrew his hand. ‘They’re bringing a stretcher,’ he said quietly.

  During the few seconds that followed not a sound was heard in the smoking-room but the monotonous pulse of the engines and the monotonous sobbing of Mrs. Gudgeon. Then the doors opened wide and two sailors entered carrying the stretcher. They lowered it to the floor and knelt down, the huddled group of kneeling bodies swayed and shifted, and then the two sailors rose slowly and simultaneously, the group broke up, and Gudgeon left the smoking-room in solemn pomp. Mrs. Gudgeon followed, supported by the doctor.

  The man with the lawyer’s face, his companion, and most of the other men present went out after them. Mr. Darby found himself standing alone. He glanced helplessly round the room and his eye fell on Mr. Amberley. He sat, a mild and slightly cynical image, in the chair in which Mr. Darby had left him: apparently he had never stirred from it. Mr. Darby, pale and shaken, sat down beside him. As he did so a steward entered, carrying a damp cloth. He wiped the floor where the body had lain, pushed Gudgeon’s chair back to its proper place and took up the broken table. Mr. Darby and Mr. Amberley watched him in silence; but before he reached the door, Mr. Darby called to him. ‘Steward, have you heard how the gentleman is?’

  The steward paused. ‘The gentleman, sir? He’s dead.’ He went out with the broken table.

  ‘Dead!’ said Mr. Darby in an awed whisper. Then he turned to Mr. Amberley. ‘What a … ah … what an appalling … ah … occurrence!’ he said, taking out his handkerchief to dry his face.

  ‘Appalling indeed,’ Mr. Amberley replied in his usual imperturbable tones, ‘but not, when broadly viewed, regrettable.’

  Mr. Darby stared at him with spectacles of horrified amazement.’ But … but … you heard the steward say he’s dead.’

  ‘Quite so!’ Mr. Amberley calmly replied. ‘Dead! I thought him, when alive, the most repulsive and degraded creature I have ever met, a menace to civilization and common decency. It would therefore be the grossest hypocrisy, my dear Darby, if I were to pretend to be sorry that he has ceased to be so. Death, I agree, is terrible, but if anything could make me feel that, after all, it has its good points, it would be an occurrence of this kind. In circumstances such as this death takes on a beneficent and sanitary aspect which is not usually apparent.’

  Mr. Darby looked at his companion sternly. ‘Amberley’ he said, ‘you … well you horrify me. You seem to me what I should call … ah … brutal. And there’s his poor wife …!’

  ‘Ah, that’s another matter,’ Mr. Amberley replied. ‘I’m sorry for her, poor woman. But as for the man himself …!’

  ‘But the poor fellow’s dead,’ persisted Mr. Darby.

  ‘Yes, Darby, I know. De mortuis and so on, a disingenuous and sentimental adage for any but those rare creatures, the pure of heart. You’re one of them, my dear Darby, and, believe me, I respect you for it. You’re an ingenuous idealist and I wish I were like you. But I’m not. I’m a sophisticated realist. Have a John Collins. You want a pick-me-up after this appalling scene, and so do I, despite my apparent callousness.’

  Mr. Darby accepted. ‘But hadn’t we better leave out the gin, Amberley?’

  ‘But why, Darby? Out of respect for the deceased?’

  Mr. Darby held up a hand. ‘Please don’t!’ he said.

  Mr. Amberley smiled. ‘I’m sorry. That shall be my last callous remark. But why no gin, Darby?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr. Darby, ‘because it appears, from the … ah … tragedy we have just witnessed, that the drinking of spirits is not very safe in these … ah … what I should call latitudes.’

  Mr. Amberley tapped the little man on the knee. ‘Come, come, my good Darby, you’re carrying innocence too far now. The thimblefuls of gin you indulge in wouldn’t hurt a rabbit on the equator, whereas a bottle of whisky a day will hurt anybody in any latitude, as you very properly call it.’

  When they had finished their drinks Mr. Amberley suggested a stroll on deck. ‘Well, Darby, what do you say to … I was going to say, to a little fresh air, but that is unhappily no longer obtainable. What do you say to a change of air and scene?’

  They left the smoking-room and stepped on deck. T
here, leaning over the rail, they found the doctor.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Mr. Amberley to him, ‘you’ll land him for burial at Aden.’

  The doctor shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t keep till Aden,’ he said. ‘He’ll have to go overboard, and the sooner the better. I’m seeing the Captain in ten minutes.’

  • • • • • • • •

  Mr. Darby, partly no doubt owing to the tragic event of the day, spent a disturbed night. The ship was pitching rather uncomfortably, but, in spite of this, he had managed to get to sleep and had slept for what seemed to him some hours, when he was roused by a loud bump. It came from the direction of the door. The shock had set his heart beating like a gas-engine, but he did not lose his presence of mind. He was ready and acted promptly. He shot out a hand to the electric light switch and at the same time he uttered aloud those words to which long rehearsal had given a fierce precision: ‘There, madam, is the door.’ And there, sure enough, as soon as he had recovered from the sudden dazzle of light, was the door. But there was no Lady Gissingham. And of course, now that he came to think of it, how could she have been there with the door locked? But was it locked? He always locked it the moment Punnett left the cabin, but he could not remember having done so to-night; and it was quite likely that he had forgotten, with an occurrence such as Gudgeon’s tragic death to distract his mind. He got up and went to the door. There now! He had forgotten, and she had actually got in. But once in, her courage had failed her and she had fled. Perhaps she had actually been there when he spoke those commanding words and had fled precipitately in the brief interval during which his eyes were accustoming themselves to the light. She must have tried the door night after night in the hope of at last finding it unlocked; and then, when at last it was unlocked, it had taken her by surprise, or perhaps the Utopia had given one of those disconcerting lurches, and she had reeled against the partition. Hence the bump. But what persistence! And what a woman! He would have to be more cautious than ever in future.